Hi Gunnar and group,
>Is the word "grok" a part of the common English
>vocabulary nowadays, by the way?
Not sure how common it is, but sci-fi nerds and California computer industry people definitely know what it means. It used to signal 1970s silicon-valley hipness (back when computers were revolutionary and cool, in a long-haired math-freak kind of way).
To connect to Pali I'd guess grok could be translated vijaanaati. Or even massively strengthened with prefixes: abhisamvijaanaati. Of course with its seven syllables this doesn't quite match the conciseness of grok.
How did you translate it into Swedish? Grokka? Fethajja?
I agree about Heinlein's books being marred by his ideology. Still it seems possible to find bits of dhamma in almost any book. The essential teachings of buddhism have such an axiomatic quality about them that you can find them reflected in almost any book one way or another (if nothing else as yet another example of dukkha or moha).
Good Yule and a happy new year to everyone,
/Rett